I’ve been listening to a podcast called Serial for the past few weeks. It is offshoot of This American Life, one of the most popular podcasts ever.
I’ve been telling people about Serial because I believe it is a revolutionary podcast. Then I saw Marco’s post mentioning it and decided to make my opinion public. Marco mentions that this podcast, and its amazing popularity, does not indicate any trend in the podcast market as a whole. He’s probably right, but I do see this format of podcast taking over as the most popular type of podcast. It could also potentially lead people who already listen to podcasts to listen even more.
The type of shift that Serial represents has been seen before with television shows. TV shows used to be self-contained episodes. Watching one episode of Who’s the Boss was pretty much like watching any another episode. Then along came shows like The Sopranos, in which each episode built on the previous ones. If you started watching in the middle of Season 2, you would be lost as to what is happening.
Serial is the podcast version. Each episode builds upon the previous one. And it is addicting.